The Religion of Jesus 



ALBERT G. LAWSON 




Class. 
Book.. 



L ..___ 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 



THE 
RELIGION OF JESUS 



ALBERT G^XAWSON 



PHILADELPHIA 

THE JUDSON PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS LOS ANGELES 

KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO 



.us 5 



Copyright, 1920, by 
GILBERT N. BRINK, Secretary 



Published December, 1920 



JAN 25 1921 



©CU608156 

> / 



PREFACE 

Presented on various occasions before Theological 
Seminaries and Ministers' Conferences, these papers 
are now put in permanent form in response to re- 
peated requests. 

Published as they are spoken, they include some 
repetitions. That they may be of genuine benefit 
to students of the religion of Jesus is the earnest 
hope of the writer. 



INTRODUCTION 



It was my privilege to hear two of the addresses 
published in this volume. The personality of the 
speaker added charm to the word spoken, and the 
charm has not been lost in the word printed. 

" The Religion of Jesus " is fitly the first of the 
series. Without it the other addresses could not 
have been conceived. The author treats the religion 
of Jesus descriptively, rather than historically and 
philosophically. He portrays graphically the inner 
experiences of Jesus Christ disclosed in the New 
Testament. The portrayal is in the form of medita- 
tion and prayer rather than of essay and exhorta- 
tion. The impression upon the reader is to make 
him desire the author's love for Christ and his 
gospel. Better Christians, better teachers, better 
preachers must be the fruitage of these addresses. 
All who heard these delivered, and all who read 
them, will be grateful to others who desired the 
publication for wide circulation. 

Milton G. Evans. 

Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Pa. 
December 1, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Religion of Jesus 1 

II. Disciples and Apostles 23 

III. A Completed Ministry. 43 

IV. Divine Methods in Human Redemption 67 



I 

THE RELIGION OF JESUS 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 



THIS is the day of inquiry. We dig up creeds 
to reach the sources of dogma, biting the thumb 
of authority as we dig. Can the real, the true, be 
found ? 

Two problems face us : Given a host of spiritual 
facts and truths far above our senses, and given a 
spirit at zero, now bring this spiritual world within 
the rim of my human spirit; that is, make the true 
about and above me truth and experience in me. 
Again, a young Jew, a worker in wood, a man of 
one book, the Hebrew writings, creates a body of 
religious truth assailed for centuries by fierce criti- 
cism which today, more clearly than ever, is show- 
ing itself to be the one universal religion. How 
did he get his religion? Who gave him his au- 
thority? What was his own faith? 

Man, " incurably religious/' is born to worship as 
the sparks fly upward; Jesus, the religious man, is 
the center of human history; religion is a life in 
right relation with God. In this right relation Jesus 
lives from Nazareth to Olivet, his great gift his life, 
its inner fountain his own religious experience. For 
self-conscious personality he is Master; as sure of 
his own unity as of the unity of God, his religion 
is his own, no man is echoed or held for a word. 

[3] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

The boy, father to the man, with religious fervor 
says, " I must be in my Father's house " ; the man 
with mature purpose, in his baptism, says, " Thus 
it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness/' Religion 
his life-blood, goodness clothes him as naturally as 
his seamless coat. To pray, to eat, to do good, to 
undo evil natural for each act is the one thing to 
do. " Would ye also go away ? " to the Twelve ; 
" Could ye not watch with me one hour ? " when 
the three lay in stupor as he lay in agony, are cries 
of deep human need. When legalism and super- 
stition bind Israel in a worse than Roman bondage, 
with faith as clear as a child's he fasts, prays, wor- 
ships, visits the sick, eats with rich or poor, preaches, 
teaches, and works in the simplest way possible. 
Natural and spiritual never separate entities to him, 
common things open heaven's door, the familiar is 
the divine, the ordinary the act of God in his re- 
ligion. To be unnatural, unreal, is impossible with 
him ; hence when scholars say, " The divine comedy 
soon passes into terrible tragedy," or of Tuesday, 
in Passion Week, "The one calm and undisturbed 
actor among all who took part in the tragic doings 
of that day," they drag him down to the level of 
men who make believe they are what they know 
they are not. Jesus marvels, weeps, is surprised, 
begs human sympathy, and one word explains it 
all — it is genuine. No scorn equals his scorn for 
the hypocrite. " Do the truth," says John, who saw 
Jesus live the truth among men. As faith's leader 

[4] 






THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

he believes, as faith's perfecter he perfects himself. 
Hence " we may safely argue from his life to his 
faith," for his religion is himself. When he can do 
no mighty work he " marvels/' says frankly, " I do 
not know," " It is not for me to give," and speaks 
truth. 

" Unite my heart to fear thy name," " We know 
not how to pray as we ought," are not applied to 
him ; but when soul agony forces the cry, " What 
shall I say ? " the words of sinful desire that tempt 
him, which he dare not speak, John writes down. 
The kingdom of evil being as real to him as the 
kingdom of God, temptation is more real and a 
more fiery trial than to us. 

His religion is not theory but practice, not the- 
ology but truth, and truth not in ideas and ideals 
so much as in a helpful, matter-of-fact life. With 
him who went about doing good, ethics and re- 
ligion are one, his service love and his love service, 
and ethical conduct the fruit of life, not life the 
fruit of ethical conduct. His works, notably those 
for the sinful, are open signs of soul throbs. To 
get best results we fix time, place, form, and often 
divorce religion from the ordinary; but he weds it 
to the common life, hence his religion, salt and light 
for the daily task, fits any time or place. With 
Matthew at the customs desk or with a widow at a 
funeral, with fishermen mending their nets or with 
a ruler praying for his child, with beggars at the 
roadside, with guests at a wedding or at the tables 

[5] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

of the rich, his religion is a cup of blessing. Who 
can imagine contact with men where it would fail 
to do good ? Is there a truer test for religion ? 

His religion is thorough! It reaches down to 
the minute deeds of a single hour, and dying he 
leaves nothing unfinished. His whole life, as his 
baptism, fulfils all righteousness, and going to the 
Father his righteousness becomes the Spirit's sword. 
When God's love and man's sin converging bind 
him to the cross, he manifests the paradox of 
plenty, for as the dying grain brings greater 
harvest his lifting-up draws all men to himself. 
" The permission of sin has cost God more than it 
has cost man," says Doctor Shedd in his rugged 
theology, and he is right. That the innocent must 
suffer with the guilty, and more than the guilty, 
and often, in vicarious love, must suffer for the 
guilty, a great law of the universe, is the principle 
of the Cross. Phillips Brooks says, " There is no 
principle involved in the atonement which is not 
involved in the most sacred relations between man 
and man," but Jesus alone fulfils this high law of 
heaven and earth. When he dies the Roman yoke 
and the slave-chain still gall men, but the force that 
breaks both is his religion. " Unto Caesar his things, 
and unto God the things of God." Disciples remain 
true to that word, and Gibbon writes on the decline 
and fall of Rome, Greece arises " with the New 
Testament in her hand," and Lincoln sets free mil- 
lions of slaves. 

[6] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

" Man of sorrows " is not the best title for him 
whose first glory sign is at a wedding, whose re- 
ligion is joy — a note not struck as it ought to be — 
whose mind, stayed on God, is kept " in perfect 
peace," for perfect peace is unruffled content, un- 
speakable joy, one and the same at heart. His 
priestly prayer is " that they may have my joy made 
full in themselves." Who lives by every word of 
God, his meat to do the will of God, his passion for 
God equaled only by his joy in God, who lives to 
bring God to men and men to God, must have full 
joy. Jesus is our joy-bringer! Christianity's 
stream of song cannot rise above its source; its 
springs are in him. " Add " to your faith is " choir 
on," a musical term, for his religion, rich with the 
joy of a redeeming purpose, creates our oratorios 
and so fills the soul that every new sacrifice is a 
new joy. In the olden time " when the burnt of- 
fering began, the song of Jehovah began also and 
the trumpets." In the fulness of time, in evil's 
dread hour, Jesus, choirmaster in that upper room, 
sings on his way to the cross ; facing death, he gives 
to his little flock his own peace, and blends into 
one the opposite elements of glory and shame. 

How radical his religion! With one God and 
one temple Israel had kept the purest faith, yet now 
religion oscillates between Pharisees praying at 
street corners and hermits seeking the wilderness; 
legalism and officialism stifle morality but load 
heavy burdens and curses on the poor; the house 

[7] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

of prayer is a den of thieves, and the religious 
leaders are whited sepulchers. With what sharp 
contrast Jesus shows mercy to the sinful, counts 
such happy as are poor in spirit, the meek, and 
they that hunger after righteousness, shares with 
publicans and sinners his food, calls such to be 
his disciples, and lays chief stress on motive and 
spirit! Independent of men and of institutions, 
he rends the tangled mesh of Talmudic tradition 
more swiftly than Samson broke his fetters. God- 
given institutions are less than the men to whom he 
gives them ; ceasing to bring good to men and men 
to God, he breaks them as Hezekiah broke Moses' 
brazen serpent. Lord of the Sabbath, greater than 
the temple, above all priests or prophets, he is not 
self-dependent or self-satisfied as we use the terms. 
He, its spring and supply, shares the new life with 
every citizen of the kingdom. 

" With the people and for the people " mirrors 
his entire course. As they are being baptized he 
comes also : John to the wilderness, but Jesus to the 
city, and when, according to his custom, he wor- 
ships with the common people, our spiritual king 
wears no special dress. He chooses twelve plain 
men to be with him for prayer and work, calls them 
brethren, folds them in the shrine of heart con- 
fidence, fills them with his spirit, and lifts them out 
of provincial narrowness into world-wide vision and 
service. 

His social worship exalts three principles: God 

[8] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

has first right to all we are, gives us first right to 
all he is, and his children must bless those who have 
least, for he gives most to those who have most 
need. Jesus thinks in the concrete : the least truth 
is large that affects men — not goodness but the 
good man, not poverty but the poor man, not evil 
but the evil-doer moves him. Great moral leaders 
are not always what Jesus always was — gentle and 
tender. The heat of his love melts caste to whom 
a blind beggar's need is broad enough to show 
God's glory. " To the poor the gospel," spoken 
twice, he lives, in the open, every day. His highest 
work begins the lowest down, in foundations laid 
among the lowly, far and away beneath the level 
of the so-called best society. " The minor moral 
needs meet in him/' for nothing is too small to be 
used in his service whose religion is so simple that 
plain men may follow. 

Psychology and philosophy today urge the free- 
dom of the moral agent and the immortality of the 
moral person — that the individual must have a 
knowledge of himself as a spiritual personality, that 
he must gain control of himself as a unit in society, 
and then give himself back as an organic part of 
the world's life, since character is the sum of our 
choices; but all this is written large in Jesus' re- 
ligion. With intellect, emotions, and will the high- 
est known, never moving out of harmdny and al- 
ways working at the flood, radical in speech but 
conservative in action, his religion shows limitless 

[9] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

might kept in perfect control and used only for un- 
selfish ends. Mental and moral qualities balance 
each other; man's strength and courage with 
woman's purity and tenderness blend into unity in 
him. He calls himself " meek and lowly " — dis- 
credited virtues — never brave or manly, as we call 
him, yet he inspires the highest courage and man- 
hood. The great crystal palace of his gifts and 
powers is filled with harmony. 

Prayer is a real test of the religious life. Who 
spends time communing with God saves time and 
himself; rich and poor, strong and weak meet to- 
gether to grow in grace in " the democracy of 
prayer." Here Jesus is supreme! Work and rest, 
joy and trial, the grind of daily toil, the growth of 
enmity, and all his experiences are sweetened with 
prayer. Three times he hears his Father speak, 
each linked with prayer as are two other signs of 
the Father's favor. To know more of ourselves 
and not to know more of God brings fear and 
failure. We know the need of prayer; he knew 
also its luxury. The floodtide of popularity and the 
first of the ebb is sanctified by a night of prayer, 
and in that night he is transfigured. 

Recall the lines traced : Jesus' religion is as natu- 
ral as it is real, as practical as it is intense, as sim- 
ple as it is supreme, as radical as it is strong, as 
self-sacrificing as it is holy, and as full of joy as 
it is of service; yet to show what it is does not 
explain how it is. Mystery will always surround 

[10] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Jesus' person and work, for his religion " essentially 
intelligible in its manifest simplicity is yet essentially 
unfathomable in its depth of meaning." We should 
be Christ-centered ; true, but where was Christ cen- 
tered? Can we learn the hidings of his power? 
Religious nature alone will not grow religious char- 
acter ; scribes and Pharisees with the nature did not 
grow the character. Men may have a religion of 
form, of sentiment, of beauty, like Herod, who 
heard John gladly and did many things but took 
off John's head at the whim of a dancing-girl. Im- 
pulse, reason, art, esthetics are not good corner- 
stones for religion. 

Three forces shape his religion: the Father, the 
Spirit, the Scriptures. Jesus loves the Old Testa- 
ment ; his delight in the law of Jehovah is great ; he 
saturates his mind with its thought, wields it as 
his sword in temptation, and through his example 
leads men to live not by bread alone but by every 
word of God. The Spirit is the one living bond 
between the Father and himself. The Spirit has 
everything in him, hence the prince of this world 
has nothing. Born of the Spirit, led of the Spirit, 
filled with the Spirit, his works credited to the 
Spirit, he makes the Spirit the sole executor of his 
last will and testament. Horizontal religions with 
creeds and councils for support dissolve and die, but 
his vertical religion, born from above, lives and tri- 
umphs forever. Fruit is the high court of appeal 
for life, but he perfects even the fruit of the Spirit. 

[in 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

The Scriptures, the Spirit, the Father — but the 
greatest of these is the Father. To reveal God, first 
and last with him, at the center of his being, is the 
completest self-surrender. Hence his word, " If 
any man would come after me, let him deny him- 
self/' teaches vastly more than self-denial. The 
order, first entire and unconditional surrender, then 
take up the cross in active service, and then follow 
him in sanctification, is illustrated in his word to 
the young ruler, " Sell everything, give to the poor, 
and then follow me." To have his religion we must 
have his principles. 

An only son should show the likeness of his 
father. " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father/' spoken first, not to Philip in the upper 
room, but on the highway at the height of the feast, 
to the crowd thronging to the temple, is not for 
dogma but an outburst of rich experience. His eye 
single, his heart pure, he sees God face to face; 
all he is and all he does is born of what God is 
and does. " The Father worketh and I work," " My 
meat is to do his will " — such obedience rests on 
perfect trust and love. " Not my will but thine " 
is the word of living unity and communion. 

Communion with God does not begin at his bap- 
tism. In the eighteen silent years he finds himself 
and God also. The lad's word, "My Father," 
thought through, felt through, willed through, be- 
comes part of his being. First things always first, 
on the Godward side of every question, some solved 

[12] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

later, so quickly thought out in those earlier days, 
all he knows and all he is he fuses into one self- 
sacrificing purpose. " To seek and to save the lost/' 
" to do the will of God," " to bear witness to the 
truth," are one, not many, and that one is to make 
his Father known. Like the sun in its strength, this 
dominant purpose shines forth, and he measures all 
things by it, for in heaven, as on earth, a noble life 
is the fruit of a noble ideal. The higher moral 
quality is not self-reliance but its opposite — faith, 
the trusting implicitly in another. 

" Father " is the one name spoken when personal 
relations are concerned; in one record of three 
verses he says " Father " five times. " The Father 
is with me," " I in him and he in me," " I and my 
Father are one," are not for theological hair-split- 
ting but the every-day joyous experiences of a soul 
rich toward God. Sure of his abode in the bosom 
of the Father when he says, " No one cometh to 
the Father but by me," his emphasis is on one 
word; men without knowing Jesus find God in 
nature, music, science, but no one comes to the 
Father without Jesus. Nicodemus and Cornelius 
know God but not the Father until Jesus is known. 
God is interpreted by fatherhood, but fatherhood 
is not fully known until the Son is born. The 
thought of God in those oft-used words, " My 
Father," ruled every moment of his ministry. 

His religion may be shown in three words, 
" vision," " passion," " action." He goes about do- 

[13] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

ing good in our visible world, but he lives and 
moves and has his being in the invisible world, for 
gravitation draws him up. He is not at his baptism 
" a man catching a glimpse of a divine meaning 
half revealed, half concealed, but rather a human 
spirit at whose very center God creatively awakens 
a new consciousness. " Henceforth he looks into the 
face of the Father with unclouded vision and walks 
with him in soulful fellowship. " I know him, be- 
cause I am from him, and he sent me," " No one 
knoweth the Son but the Father," " I am not alone, 
the Father is with me/' " I do always those things 
which please him," sweet experiences of an ingenu- 
ous spirit conscious that nothing can separate him 
from his Father's love, flower forth in that high 
desire, " Father, glorify thou me with thine own 
self, with the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was." 

A king without regalia, 
A god without the thunder 

Ay a creator rent asunder 
From his first glory and cast away 
On his own world. 

Unhindered vision of God, unfailing love for man, 
and unceasing fidelity to both give clear views, 
purest character, dauntless courage, and eternal 
fruitage. The burden-bearing love of God for the 
lost burns in him like an altar-fire that cannot go 

[14] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

out. To lead a sinful woman to his Father is more 
than to eat with his own band. Nor agony nor 
enmity could throw a shadow of doubt on the dial 
of his hope. " Himself from God he could not 
free." The Father's smile fails him only in one 
short hour, but his vision of the Father never fails, 
nor fades into the light of common day. 

Sharer with God and man, the true daysman tests 
his love to God by his love to man, how near he is 
to God by his nearness to man, and how much God 
is in him by the power for good he brings into the 
world. " A year of obscurity, a year of public 
favor, a year of opposition, and in one day death," 
is the human record of a ministry which, as our true 
tree of life, brings forth fruit every day. No re- 
specter of persons that he may be brother to every 
man, poor yet making many rich, he 

Lived with God in such untroubled love 
And clear confiding, as a child on whom 
The Father's face had never yet but smiled ; 
And with men even, in such harmony 
Of brotherhood, that whatsoever spark 
Of pure and true in any human heart 
Flickered and lived, it burned itself toward 
Him. 

His religion shows the ideal religious life, since 
to live as he lived and to love as he loved is the 
highest life possible on the floor of earth. " When 
humanity, like fruit too heavy for the stalk it hangs 
on, is dragged to the dust by its own weight," Jesus 

[15] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

comes to lift man up again to God. The most per- 
fect man known to men lives to serve, not to be 
served. " He could do justice to men because he 
loved them so." When he knows his hour is come 
to take a towel and gird himself and wash his dis- 
ciples' feet, from Peter to Judas, he puts into the 
concrete the whole Sermon on the Mount. "Who 
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without 
blemish unto God " seems to sum up all his life in 
one religious act. " In the van of twenty centuries, 
with unwearied feet he goes about today doing 
good." 

The worth of his religion is above price. He 
comes from God, but must know release from evil, 
communion with God, and devotion to his will by 
human experience. What he thus knows — and 
there were crises in his experience who grew in 
grace, who learned obedience, who was made per- 
fect by sufferings, who says the Father has yet 
greater things to show me — what he thinks and 
speaks, what he does and is — that is the core of 
Christianity. If his life is history's holy of holies, 
his religion is the Shekinah glory in that holy of 
holies. No religious leader ever taught or lived so 
little that was transient and " so much that was time- 
less and eternal," hence " the literature of the world 
holds no doctrine so limited in bulk, so limitless in 
meaning and service as the gospel record of Jesus." 

Two great notes arise out of his experience — 
authority and completeness. His a religion of cer- 

[16] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

tainties, he makes known eternal realities: he has 
no doubt as to himself or the Father or the triumph 
of his gospel. He knows hatred will assail his truth, 
but he also knows nothing can arrest the moral force 
he sets free ; the gates of hell cannot prevail against 
it. Sure of what lives beyond, he says, " It is for you 
I go and for you I will come again." That one deed 
will be told to the end of the age wherever the gospel 
goes. The will of God is done in him as it is done 
in heaven, hence his religion, practical and perma- 
nent, is the absolute and final religion, for it makes 
known that which is. The life of God present in 
him is reproduced in us ; the love of God abiding in 
him is awakened and made effective in us. It is the 
right life, for the all-righteousness is lived in the 
character that men ought to bear. It is the power 
of God unto salvation, for it actually saves men, 
makes them whole, brings to pass what ought to be, 
since it is not something done for us so much as 
something done in us that saves. 1 He unlocks the 
infinite fulness of God and exalts the infinite 
capacities of man. The source of deathless power 
in him, his own religious experience reveals a whole 
being and a whole life at one with the soul's highest 
vision of God. 

Whatever was " emptied " when the Word be- 
came flesh, the elements of constitution common to 
God and man were kept, for Jesus has the ideal 
potentiality set up in the original constitution. He 

1 Abridged from William Newton Clarke. 

[17] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 



taught Nicodemus heavenly things. The ascent of 
man by the descent of the Son of Man begins by 
the inflow of life from above, and at its height men 
become partakers of the divine nature. Since good- 
ness and virtue and moral standards are one to God 
and the normal man, good and evil the same to both, 
religion is not only possible but fundamental. If 
good and evil were one to man and another to God, 
we could have no certainty in morals and there 
could be no religion. The real character of God 
and the right character of man shown in one per- 
son fix the unity of the moral standards in both, and 
Jesus is the final proof of their oneness for time and 
eternity. Jesus does not move among men as an 
automaton ; it is not from device or contrivance that 
he lives and works, but from the inner necessities 
of his being. He is a giver and a lover from the 
beginning, for this is God's way to man and man's 
way to God, and the two facts, the height of the 
infinite God above the finite man and the image of 
the infinite Father in the finite Son, make a re- 
ligious life the most glorious life possible. He who 
coined the terms " The Galilean vagabond " and 
" The ugly little Jew," a thinking man is capable 
also of saying " My Lord and my God," " For me 
to live is Christ.'" 

To assail the authority of Jesus is to sow anarchy ; 
sown here, it will waft its seeds everywhere, and 
that day will return, once tried in Israel, when 
" every man did that which was right in his own 

[18] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

eyes," though history does not commend the fruit 
very highly. He who has nothing above his own 
inner light stands at the level of Nicodemus ; to him 
Jesus is merely a teacher sent from God. Peter 
knows more who says, " We have believed and know 
that thou art the Holy One of God." John knows 
more who says, " Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God, and believing ye may have life in his name," 
for Jesus does not give rules of life but life itself. 
Unto the end of the ages will men say, " In him is 
life, and the life is the light of the world." 

Jesus knew himself to be the one interpreter of 
God, the one mediator between God and men, and 
we are to live as he lived. Truth revealed to him 
takes full possession and is so wrought into his 
own being that he says, " I am the truth, I am the 
life," and higher sayings even he does not utter. 

Did Jesus have two standards of religion, one for 
himself and another for us? No, God cannot have 
two standards. Yet he does not confess sin, make 
quest for salvation, or pray for pardon. That re- 
ligion is not a stop-gap for guilt, evoked because sin 
came into the world, is one of the chief signs in 
his religion. Personal sin is not necessary to the 
best knowledge of God or to the best manhood, for 
who knew God as he knew him ? Religion is in the 
nature of things, its deepest cause in the nature of 
God, and its deepest need in the nature of man. 
The more normal we are the more Christian we 
shall be, is the showing of his life. He who lives 

[19] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 



sinless among the sinful never speculates about sin, 
has clearest concepts of it, and most severely con- 
demns it, the seventh chapter of Romans being in- 
conceivable in his experience; yet sin is to no one 
so actual and awful a fact as to him who gave his 
life to destroy it. 

We sin and fall short of the glory of God, he 
ceases not to keep that glory; we know more than 
we practise, he practises all he knows, the one being 
who lives abreast of his ideals. The first duty of 
those who turn away is to return to God. He who 
omits nothing he should do and does nothing he 
should not do — how can he turn ? Heaven is always 
present, not future, nearer than Bethany to him. 
When in his own synagogue of Nazareth his service 
is lost in a dead sea of ingratitude, he looks from 
without to the inner light of an approving con- 
science. " He speaks always from within," yet no 
word spoken of his life is so fruitful as the life 
itself, and his own experience is his great gift. 
Virtue is always going forth from him. His heart 
is the home of the perfect and the permanent, his 
broken heart the fountain of sin and uncleanness. 
His religion is not because he is the Messiah — he 
is the Messiah because his life of right relation with 
God from first to last is without flaw. At his birth, 
religion was another name for fears and blood and 
power, for priesthood and superstition. God was a 
name to excite dread. He was an absentee God. 
At his death, truth and love, joy and peace meet to- 

[20] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

gether. God is in all things. Henceforth, God 
lives with men; in the lowliest as in the highest 
human experiences and conditions God is always 
present. Religion cannot again be chiefly a matter 
of relation to law or race or government ; it is essen- 
tially a relation of persons. He suffered, the just 
for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. Per- 
sonal faith in a personal God wrought out in heart 
experience is our sheet-anchor. 

His religion in its deepest vision of truth and its 
most spiritual methods is our goal. The upward 
calling of God is in Christ Jesus. Christ formed in 
us, his thought, his will, his spirit living in us is our 
hope of glory. As the image thus formed shines 
through the man like light through glass, so he, 
the sun of righteousness, transmits his light down- 
ward through the centuries and outward to the re- 
motest corners of the world. Henceforth it is less 
what generation a man lives in and more what the 
generative power of the man who lives. Even 
Renan could say, " Whatever may be the surprises 
of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed/' 
Humanity slowly advances toward him in religious 
living, but he is and ever must be the one great 
captain and leader. The signs he works are forever 
less than the sign he is. God makes new wheat out 
of old wheat, out of one grain not only a new body 
but a hundredfold other bodies like unto it. So 
Jesus multiplies the seed, the word of God, and one 
sentence of his has wrought a greater harvest than 

[21] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

the seven full years brought to the granaries of 
Egypt. The seed stores of the fourfold Gospel pro- 
duce the great book harvest which fills the libraries 
of Christendom, but the religion of Jesus is the life 
of the seed. 

So familiar is the story that we often fail to see 
its amazing wonder. Think a moment. A plain 
man, in a Syrian village, who died centuries ago, is, 
in this twentieth century, the embodiment of con- 
science for the whole world. In a world always 
evolving morality no one ever catches up with him. 
" Abreast of all the centuries, he is the pathbreaker 
of mankind. He incarnates the light and truth by 
which I live today because he cross-sectioned life 
where it touches God." He is the highest I know, 
and by the highest I interpret God. As the alabas- 
ter box filled the house with its perfume, so the 
religion of Jesus is yet to fill the world with its 
perfume of holiness through lives of utmost suffer- 
ing often, yet so held in the right relation with God 
as to enjoy full assurance of transcendent glory. 



[22] 



II 

DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 1 



TO Jesus the earth is a house of God, its hills 
and rocks are nature-altars where at any time 
he may find the Father. On a certain night, as his 
custom was, he went up the hill; a night of prayer 
equips him for a day of toil, and coming down to 
the plain he chooses twelve apostles. In his great 
prayer he said more than once, " Thou gavest them 
to me " ; was it in that night they were given, and 
did he talk with the Father about John and Peter ? 
That which is natural is first, then that which is 
spiritual. There is a natural history of Christian- 
ity and of Christian activities. Religion is kept alive 
on the street, not in the cloister, not with John in 
the wilderness, but with Jesus going about the 
towns and cities. You remember the motto: Jesus 
alone can save the world, but Jesus cannot save the 
world alone. Going about Galilee preaching, teach- 
ing, and healing, the people crowd upon him, and so 
many calls come from other places, he summons 
helpers. " It was in those days that he went off to 
the hillside to pray. He spent the whole night in 
prayer to God, and when the day broke he sum- 
moned his disciples, choosing twelve of them, to 
whom he gave the names of apostles " (Moffatt's 

1 Sermon preached on Day of Prayer for Schools and Colleges, 
February 22, 191 7, in the Crozer Seminary Chapel, Upland, Pa. 

[25] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

translation of Luke 6 : 12, 13). He uses what is 
to bring forth what is to be ; out of the best of the 
present builds the highest for the future. 

We condemn usually by wholesale, " all have 
sinned," but we promote individuals, and Jesus 
himself gives the name " apostle," missionary. Mis- 
sive, missile, mission, missionary, have one root, 
and the missionary may be regarded as sent forth, 
thrust forth, hurled forth into the work of the 
kingdom. Apostle spells advance, aggressiveness, 
achievement. This verse as a cluster from Eschol 
exceeding rich in truth, contains far more than we 
can present in one address. 

Are we disciples or apostles? There may be a 
great difference between the disciples of Jesus and 
the apostles of Christ. When he is deserted by dis- 
ciples, his heart-cry is to his apostles, "Will ye 
also go away ? " A disciple may be a sponge, but an 
apostle must serve; a disciple may keep his nets, 
but an apostle leaves his boats and nets; a disciple 
may be selfish, but an apostle must have 

Room to deny himself, a path 
To bring him daily nearer God. 

He finds his life in losing it; a disciple may know 
much about Jesus; but an apostle must be able to 
witness with Paul, " For me to live is Christ," " He 
lives in me, the hope of glory." A disciple may 
imitate and, that, another disciple; but an apostle 
must assimilate, incarnate, and reproduce what is 

[26] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

given. Liberty and promotion are bills receivable 
whose exchange value is not so much of knowledge 
as of power in service. Apostles are trustees with 
power; special work is expected, but special oppor- 
tunity and special graces are given. They may have 
honor, but they must have life and fruit; it is the 
choice disciple who is chosen to be an apostle. 
Jesus unfolds the authority and the contagion of 
life ; " I in you and you in me " is spiritual biology. 

" Freely ye have received, freely give." What 
man does for man is on a basis of parity, it is give 
and take, but on Christ's part it is all giving; for 
truth is given that it may be given forth. A real 
sermon is a living deed, its truths meet our needs 
and quicken our spirits. He who has, will have, 
and giving freely will increase what he has. It is 
the best of the inner life that flowers out for the 
enriching of other lives. Effluence and influence 
are brothers close as Siamese twins; the death of 
either kills the other. Andrew illustrates both in 
bringing Simon, his brother, to Jesus, for we know 
Him fully for ourselves only as we bring others to 
know and enjoy him. 

" I have chosen you and placed you " is a great 
witness to faith. To faith, I say, not of the men 
chosen, for they knew not what spirit they were of, 
but the faith of Jesus who chose them. It is worth 
vastly more to have God believe in me than that I 
should have faith in him. Henceforth poor men from 
among the common people may render highest ser- 

[27] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

vice to the church and the world. The people see 
little in these men, and we see little, at first, of the 
power the world needs, yet in these plain men, nar- 
row men, Galilean provincials, Jesus finds captains 
for the most wonderful crusade ever planned. It is 
clear that grace is more than gifts when men of 
Galilee can turn the world upside down. We know 
little of their history, yet one third of them came to 
honor, and Paul, a good judge of men, salutes some 
of them as " pillars/' Fishermen of Galilee have 
their names written in the book of God's purpose 
for world conquests. Your life is not only a plan 
of God but a plan of God for Christ and you and 
the world. An upper room in Jerusalem once held 
the full company of these crusaders. Edward 
Everett's famous challenge for the Pilgrims is an- 
swered by these humble Christians who front the 
world for Christ and the church. 

Religion gains the rights, feeds the faculties, and 
guides the progress of mankind, and there is a the- 
ology of discovery and invention as well as of doc- 
trine. God's book of appointments records blue- 
prints for world building, yet it is not by rule that 
we live and work. Obedience may be forced until 
it sinks into mere automatism and the most legal 
conduct produces the most immoral character. A 
man may say " in whom we live and move " and 
continue to be a bad man. When education hardens 
into rigid rules, the more we are taught to know 
the less we are likely to do and to be. Jesus gives 

[28] 






DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

spirit and life, teaches by example, and puts the 
apostles to work under his own eye. We are not 
to follow rules of faith and practice, but a living 
Lord, whose kingly spirit reigns in our souls; not 
so much to defend a faith as to transmute faith into 
character and fitness for service. The living ex- 
perience of the soul certifies to his indwelling. Who 
do the truth know the truth. Who keep his words 
know his love. " Lo, I am with you always " is 
not only promise but fact. 

In his parable the good seed of one verse is in 
the next verse the sons of the kingdom; the word 
is the life. Because we are akin to God and can 
grow, we are trained and are worth the training. 
Brotherhood in need and in ability is grounded in 
the Father's supply and gracious purpose for our 
unfolding. It pleases God to reveal his Son in us 
the source and substance of our equipment. 

Chosen to be " with him " is the graphic word 
of Mark as the earlier chronicler wrote of some 
who were " with the king for his work." Apostles 
are Christ's Comrades of Service, his Beneficent 
Brotherhood. We sharpen our sickles to cut grass, 
for iron sharpeneth iron, much more the countenance 
of a man his friend, and infinitely more the heart 
of the Lord the hearts of the men of his choice. 
With him to be trained into personal and communal 
enriching ; individual work and team-work are both 
provided for and expected. Thus are disciples 
transformed into apostles. 

[29] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

His apostles have new names, new natures, new 
destiny, new training until we are able to see that 
their larger life has lifted them out of the flood of 
current tendencies on to the high plateau of divine 
causes and purposes. A physician must know the 
disease and the remedy but also the body in which 
both are at work. Jesus knew sin and salvation as 
well as man and the world in which both were 
working when he chose the twelve plain Galileans 
to be his apostles. Men who drift with the tides of 
tendency, who are reading today's news to find 
texts for tomorrow's sermons are not likely to be 
trusted with large commissions for the kingdom 
of God. Men who sing only of sweetness and light 
or chirp softly of the humanities, are not those who 
turn the world upside down. Jesus, knowing that 
he had come forth from God and was going to 
God, stands before them, and takes not a sword, 
not a scepter, but a towel, and girds himself to 
serve even Simon and Judas. 

Jesus sets the standard for greatness; he that 
would be great among you let him be your minister. 
He came to serve, not to be served, and to give his 
life a ransom for many. It is the sacrifice that con- 
sumes the sin and satisfies the soul, the ministry of 
generous self-suppression that paves the way to the 
greatness of self-enrichment and world-wide exalta- 
tion. The only fruitful thing is sacrifice. " The king 
alone can make the kingdom ; to be slaves of Christ, 
the King of kings, is to be masters of every fate/' 

[30] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

One great law of humanity, of the universe, and 
of the being of God is written large in his life — the 
innocent suffer with the guilty, and more than the 
guilty, and often for the guilty. When we renounce 
ourselves, the life and love of God pour into our 
souls, for the river of God is always full. When 
the highest work begins the lowest down, the flood- 
gates of joy are opened to the soul even as " when 
the burnt-offering began, the song of the Lord 
began also with the trumpets." Men long for hori- 
zon, and Jesus gives expansion, liberty, spacious- 
ness, hope, and wondrous honor. Apostles become 
ambassadors for God ! Their personal authority is 
in the personal authority of the Christ. 

Oh, the height of the riches of the wisdom and 
goodness of our God that we may be laborers to- 
gether with him ! That never means less work, but 
more ; work all the more because God is our partner. 
Who ever wrought as Jesus did? Set free to serve, 
and when we have served well, we are promoted to 
higher and more difficult service for our reward. 
They are worthy to rule who have learned to serve, 
and the more spiritual we are, the more we are his 
servants. 

It is for the future they are chosen. The citizen- 
ship of tomorrow is in the streets and the schools 
of today, and the ministry of tomorrow is in the 
churches and the schools of today. Is it to be a 
higher citizenship and a higher ministry? That de- 
pends largely upon how you and I behave. Serving 

[31] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

well our own generation we shall be doing the best 
for the next and the coming generations. Faith in 
God is kept by keeping faith with God, for com- 
mission and character go together. 

Truth crushed to earth will rise again; yes, but 
how does truth get up ? When some man or woman 
comes along filled with the love of truth, and at the 
risk of social ostracism, of every kind of opposition, 
perhaps of persecution and death, picks up the truth, 
holds it aloft, and carries it forward to victory. 
Bruno and Galileo, John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, 
and, yet nearer to us, Florence Nightingale, Neal 
Dow, John B. Gough, and Frances Willard, vindi- 
cate this fact. Truth is strong and overarches every 
generation, but truth plus personality is stronger. 
In the sphere of religion it is sometimes more dif- 
ficult to live than to die. It is certainly true that 
Paul found it so, as he tells the Philippians. 

Ambassadors have authority. He that receiveth 
you receiveth me. Jesus himself is the giver and 
the goal of their highest hopes. It has been well 
said : " Christianity, in its broadest definition, is sim- 
ply the reality of things. It is a setting forth of the 
true order of humanity. ,, The truths committed 
to apostles are realities ; God and man, heaven and 
hell, sin and salvation, truth and error, conscience 
and reason are realities. Jesus and his work, the re- 
sources and the fruits of his life, are realities. Sum 
them all up, and you have the reality of redemption, 
the reality of present resources, and the reality of 

[32] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

future glory, and these are foundations which can- 
not be shaken. Religion has its immediacy, " He 
that believeth hath everlasting life/* but more its 
forthcoming glories out of " the vast far-stretching 
reaches into the eternities." This is life eternal, to 
know God and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. 
Christian optimism is "the permanent post of the 
spirit " at home with Christ. 

God seeks men, not creeds or books or buildings 
or altars, but men. As Doctor Gordon used to say, 
" The world needs not more men, but more Man," 
and man is permanent only in what most makes 
him man. Manhood is real and life is real as faith 
and hope are real, and the realities Jesus brings may 
be trusted to control our forms and methods of 
operation. Certain men have somewhat of their 
authority in a ring they wear, but I can think that 
Paul's chain was worth more to him than any ring 
ever worn by an ecclesiastic, for that chain bound 
him to the Pretorian guard, and by that chain Paul 
entered even into Caesar's household. Peter's big 
hands, his boats and nets are not more real than 
his new name and growing character. One touch 
of the hem of the robe heals because Jesus is inside 
the robe. Wear a robe and a ring if you will, but 
be a man inside them both ; preach in a church with 
its dim religious light, if you must, but do not let 
the dim religious light get into your preaching. 
Failures are not from that which is without but 
from inward spiritual evaporation and decay; some 

[33] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

men who complain bitterly of the dead-line were 
dead before they ever touched the line. Truth, 
purity, love, hope, and joy live today brighter 
than ever, and Jesus in whom they have their spring 
and perfectness lives and reigns today more royally 
than on that earlier morning in Galilee. Guerrilla 
chiefs prance up and down, would-be prophets make 
silly ventures, and some are disquieted; but He 
who lighteth every man coming into the world is 
God with us and in us all the days, for the saving 
of the world. 

Jesus is the man of the imperial intellect, of the 
imperial heart, and of the imperial will, and he 
chooses us because we also can think and feel and 
do. To train the will for character and the intellect 
for insight is good ; better still is it to fuse the two 
into one, for a man finds himself not by " thinking 
but by doing." 

Who wants faith at the cost of honest and clear 
thinking? To fall in love with our own thinking 
crowds out the thoughts of God, so dear to the 
psalmist, and one may become so vain of his own 
mind as to leave no room for the mind of Christ. 
Intellectual integrity is better than intellectual cul- 
ture, but having both, melt them with spiritual fire ; 
then though poor we may make many rich, and hav- 
ing nothing may possess all things. 

We are wholly dependent on Gbd, for without 
him we can do nothing. The other side is also true, 
for God can do nothing for us or through us for 

[34] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

others without our willing surrender to him. The 
potter is more than the clay, but the potter can do 
nothing without the clay. Noah's ark is not built 
without Noah or Abram's altars without Abram. 
Jesus uses water to make the wine and the five 
barley loaves to feed the multitude. The power to 
think and feel and do brings us into debt to God 
to think clearly and correctly, feel deeply and 
steadily, work earnestly and determinedly and to 
bring forth abundant fruit if we would be meet 
for the Master's use. Jesus welcomes differences 
among his disciples. It is almost like romance when 
Matthew the publican and Simon the zealot are 
workers in comradeship. He calls them because 
they differ, and then knits them into unity, but he 
must have a disciple to start with or he cannot 
have an apostle. 

We belong to Christ, and when he has full con- 
trol, even " dispositions are powers, positive forces, 
vitalizing the common life of man " and preventing 
" the perilous leakage " of spirituality. We will 
have boldness concerning spiritual realities and 
blend " with every mode of the consecrated spirit 
the mighty energy of God." Wait upon God until 
he kneads the truth into the whole being, for the 
most precious gift may be held by us apart from 
the inner life. Pride is not the only thing that 
puffeth up. To thirst for him as the hart for the 
water brooks, to have no higher desire than that of 
unity with him, praying steadily, " Unite my heart to 

[35] 



THE RELIGION OF JESU S 

do thy will/' to live and move and have our being in 
him as the quick experience of the soul, this is life 
indeed. 

It is written, " He gave them power," and again 
it is written, "As the Father sent me, even so I 
send you ; and he breathed on them saying, ' Receive 
ye the Holy Spirit/ " The Spirit brings fire into 
the soul even as with Moses the fire of the bush 
ever after burned in his being. And what is fire? 
It has three constituents, light, heat, and motion, 
and these transmuted into mental and spiritual 
energies become Vision, Passion, and Action. 
Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible; 
prophets and apostles had power as they looked 
upon the invisible God. Upon all with which we 
have to do we must bring to bear the light of eter- 
nity, be not content with ideas but crave ideals. 
Aaron Burr had ideas a plenty; but Lincoln had 
ideals also which were a lamp unto his feet and a 
light unto his path. Vision soon passes into voca- 
tion ; it is the man who has seen God who goes out 
urgently even though he knows not whither he 
goes, and our Lord for the joy set before him en- 
dured the cross. Newton blowing soap-bubbles, and 
Cyrus W. Field spending months as a hermit in 
the forests of Newfoundland, had visions of coming 
glories for God and man when their ideals should 
pass into principles and practices for the welfare 
of the world. Some men brilliant, eloquent, schol- 
arly, " seeing many things observe not," the vision 

[36] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

of God leaves no imprint on their souls or their 
faces, and the hearts of men burn not as they preach 
or teach. 

With vision must be passion; how wonderful 
Moses' life at this point. A man who can pray, 
" Show me thy glory; blot me out of thy book; a 
prophet like unto me shall God raise up," seems to 
live alongside of Paul whose sign manual " In 
Christ " certifies that he has the right to cry out, " I 
live, yet not I, Christ lives in me." It is the con- 
straint of love that makes it possible for him to 
say, " I could wish myself accursed from Christ for 
my brethren." To eat his flesh and to drink his 
blood is more than to follow in his steps. It is not 
imitation so much as it is assimilation that we 
need. The old-time word, " the fire of the altar shall 
not go out," is witnessed today in every synagogue 
throughout the world ; so also in the temples of the 
Spirit should abide the burning heart, as the energy 
we need in work and worship. Moses " endured " ; 
vision and passion were wrought into action. So 
apostles filled with the Spirit were always men of 
action, the most prodigious workers the world con- 
tained. He who went about doing good, lived and 
served anew in them. 

The greatest agency we have within our power is 
prayer. No man has ever wrought an outstanding 
work for God who was not a man of prayer; the 
greater the work the greater the life of prayer. 
"Who through the eternal spirit offered himself 

[37] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

an unblemished sacrifice unto God " — -it is as if the 
whole life were gathered up into one act. Prayer 
was to Him as the normal expression of his whole 
being ; he was not only wont to pray, but he without 
ceasing prayed. His unbroken fellowship with the 
Father was only mated by his unutterable love to 
man. Eminent teachers have lately said that Jesus 
did not need to pray. I do not believe a word of 
that. It overlooks the foundation fact that Jesus 
was not in the habit of doing what he did not need 
to do. It is better to say, " He prayed with all his 
might and hurled his life after his prayer." And the 
other fact, quite as important, that prayer is a ser- 
vice of much wider scope, a field of greater extent 
than most men have yet explored. 

As the cool spring of the hillside sustains life in 
the suffocating heat of the valley, so prayer is the 
fountain of refreshing that fills the soul with spir- 
itual energy. It is a source of perpetual power for 
the needs of the spirit. Paul makes a wonderful 
statement of prayer and the Holy Spirit in a quite 
unused but most remarkable personal experience: 
" For I know that this " (bonds, factions, the whole 
trial of the earlier part of the chapter), "I know 
that this shall turn out to my salvation, through 
your supplications and the supply of the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1 : 19). It is the only time 
the Spirit has that title, the only time his life-giving 
service is spoken of as a steady flowing into our 
souls, as the water flows into our homes, and then 

[38] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

with that is joined the praying of young, almost 
untrained disciples. Philippians become indeed fel- 
low citizens of the commonwealth of God when 
praying with and for Paul. Was ever higher tribute 
given to ordinary prayer? 

To Paul it was no " wave of golden mist athwart 
the sky/' but rather as in " wondrous barter he ex- 
changed a dead self for a living Christ. ,, Here we 
gain the power to see and the courage to do the will 
of God. God never does for us what we can do for 
ourselves. The man of prayer is the man of power. 
Doctor Strong says men came from the college to 
him who " could tell their whole experience without 
once naming sin or Christ." What do such men 
know of prayer? It is a battle-field where many a 
giant is laid low and we are given the victory. It 
is often a duel between lust and love. Prayer melts 
chains that hammers and anvils could not break. 
Study may make scholars, but saints are made 
through prayer. Havelock's saints won their vic- 
tories first on their knees ; the knee-drill of the Sal- 
vation Army brings the courage required for their 
lads and lassies in the personal, practical work of 
the street. The heat of intercession melts the proud 
heart, and kneeling in prayer makes good kindling 
for a burning heart. Good men do not always show 
good sense; my scythe has often seemed good, but 
the work done was not good, for I had failed to 
whet my scythe. Go through your closets to your 
services one and all, and especially to your preach- 

[39] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

ing. Power with men for God is the fruit of power 
with God for men; therefore speak with God ere 
you speak to men, and speak with him ere you 
assume to speak for him. Have no fear that we 
will draw too near to God or that Christ will get too 
strong a hold upon our hearts. 

Not what we ask, but why and how are the more 
important. It is an old jingle, but it has a good 
lesson, 

Prayers and praises go in pairs — 
They have praises who have prayers. 

Mankind could ill afford to lose all the art, the 
literature, the science of Greece and Rome and of 
the earlier Eastern nations, yet the prophets of 
Israel and the apostles of Christ have bequeathed 
a vastly richer heritage to men. Their writings 
and experiences are the treasure-trove of power, the 
seed-bins of harvests for all time. The world's 
Greathearts have not surpassed their vision, pas- 
sion, and action. Knowing how to pray, they be- 
came conquerors, and no group of workers in any 
other field of human welfare have wrought more 
and more worthily for God and man. Prayer 
creates optimism, and here they shine as stars whose 
light will never know eclipse. 

Bunyan's thought of Jerusalem sinners and the 
devil's castaways illustrates Paul's " where sin 
abounded, grace did much more abound." The 
world's discarded waste is God's raw material for 

[40] 



DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES 

some of his saints. The redemptive purpose of God 
is not a patchwork put together after the rent ap- 
peared ; it had its birth in the far distant eternities, 
or ever the foundations of the earth were laid or the 
balancings of the clouds were known. To Paul and 
the apostles this purpose was as an atmosphere in 
which all thoughts and desires and doings had their 
enriching and sustaining breath. It is not a sud- 
den summer shower, but through the dark back- 
ground and abyss of sin this eternal purpose pours 
in floods of grace and glory. To these men of God 
the base, the despised, the things that are nothing, 
are clothed with light; the dead in sin are to stand 
in the presence of God without any spot or wrinkle. 
Visions of the coming glory inspire songs of victory. 
Paul is the preeminent optimist, his " conception of 
life is amazingly rich in friendly dynamics." " To 
live is Christ, to die is gain, to be absent from the 
body is to be at home with the Lord," and these are 
more real to him than the chains on his hands and 
feet or the solid earth on which he treads. He is 
the color-bearer of the apostolic company, easily the 
foremost man " with the upward look," always re- 
joicing in hope. And through all his earthly toil 
faith, hope, love, prayer, one and all work; God 
works in while he works out, and he is girt on every 
side by the things that work together for good. 

The glory of Christianity is not in its past. We 
do well to follow Paul as he followed Christ, but we 
cannot return even to the apostles for our types 

[41] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

of service; every generation must frame its own 
methods of attack and defense. They have their 
portion now in that cloud of witnesses of which 
he wrote. We can and ought to do all things 
through Christ. If captains of earth's foremost 
workers count upon the fixedness of nature and her 
inexhaustible resources when they look forward, 
much more ministers of grace should count upon 
our covenant-keeping God and the unsearchable 
riches of Christ. More light is yet to break out 
from the word of the Lord; his assurance of 
" greater works " to be done, of " all truth " to be 
opened, has not yet been fulfilled. Is it reserved 
for this twentieth century to rejoice in all these 
marvels of God accomplished? 

I look for refreshing from the Lord in the rescue 
of multitudes and in their building up unto him, for 
missionary zeal far and away beyond what any 
man or age has yet revealed, for beneficence that 
shall become Christians in a day of prosperity, for 
evangelistic education and educated evangelism 
known of all as the two arms of active Christians, 
for preachers worthy also to be called " golden- 
mouthed, ,, like the beloved Judson whose " artful 
artlessness or artless artfulness " was always sanc- 
tified to the Christ unto whom he gave his life, and 
who shall be winners of souls beyond a Wesley or a 
Spurgeon, and for the day when all who confess 
Christ shall be examples to them that believe in 
word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity. 

[42] 






Ill 

A COMPLETED MINISTRY 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 



PAUL sums up his advice coveting completeness 
for Timothy — a choice but timid spirit who 
needs a higher estimate of himself and of his 
work — in the words " Complete thy ministry." 
True self-respect commands others' real respect. 
Aiming to magnify the office, our self-esteem yoked 
with self-indulgence and surpassed only by ignorance 
of the pride that lurks within, we may end by mag- 
nifying ourselves. 

Beware of too sublime a sense 

Of your own worth and consequence. 

If we count ourselves really helpless, we have a 
dynamic of untold power ready to our use, " for it is 
just when I am frail that I am truly strong." The 
inner man may thrive when the outer man shrinks, 
the body move from strong to weak while the soul 
moves from weak to strong. Becoming old in years 
may be growing young in spirit and life, for truth 
and the soul have no gray hairs. 

The virtue of the veteran puts new vigor into 
the young soldier. Paul the aged, the prisoner of 
the Lord, is writing; his cold body sorely needs 
the cloak left at Troas, but he writes with a hot 
heart. The fire of Paul's great soul burns in his 

[45] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

prison letters even after many years, and multitudes 
of Christians walk in its light today. Yea, many 
walk in light kindled by sparks from men's souls 
called " fools " in their own generation. He who 
is about to die salutes; it is the superb salute of 
a shackled hand. " Timothy, my child, my work is 
done ; I am as wine about to be poured on the altar, 
as a ship putting out to sea, as a wrestler whose race 
is run, as a soldier who has kept his oath of loyalty. 
I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus 
the Judge, never blush for the witness you bear 
of our Lord nor for me his prisoner ; preach Christ, 
be urgent in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, 
exhort with tireless patience, herald the glad tidings, 
complete your service as God's steward." 

What did Paul want completed? What are the 
essentials of a complete ministry? An analysis of 
these pastoral letters makes clear at least four 
things : Furnishing, Timeliness, Personality, and 
Supernaturalness, or Having, Doing, Giving, and 
Being. The making of good ministers of Jesus 
Christ approaches the glory of fine art, yet fledg- 
lings may fly out of a seminary even today. Scrip- 
ture given that we may be complete, thoroughly 
equipped for all good work, is full of inspiring ideas 
and ideals and also is full of definite truths, ethical, 
moral, political, social, and 'humane. Close study 
makes these our own, and since we deal with sins as 
well as sin, we have truths as well as truth. Ologies 
and isms are here not ticketed and barnacled as we 

[46] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

know them, still less exalted above the gospel, and 
also warnings as to science falsely so called. 

Make sure of truth, 
And truth will make thee sure; 

It will not shift nor fade nor die. 
But like the heavens endure. 

Timothy, a pastor in Ephesus, beautiful as any of 
our own cities and worse than any American city — 
a young man well fitted to the work — Paul seeks 
for him a higher training. Hence the figures, sol- 
dier, racer, wrestler, and farmer follow each other 
quickly : that he be brave, inured to hardship, skilful, 
patient, and persistent in toil. We cannot be good 
ministers of Christ without superhuman effort. 
Paul follows Jesus in not hiding the facts, but puts 
persecutions and trials squarely before Timothy and 
says " suffer hardship " three times within a few 
score lines. He must be no dress-parade soldier 
but a real man, ready to war a good warfare in the 
market-place or the arena as well as in the syna- 
gogue or assembly. 

The elements, the relations, the aspects of our 
nature as religious, is our sphere; the soul, its con- 
stitution, its hindrances, its destinies, is our sphere ; 
the awful certainties of heaven and earth and hell is 
our sphere. 

Who would rush into such a service before he is 
sent? What calling justifies a longer apprentice- 
ship? Yet name one into which some types of 

[47] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

men crowd themselves more hastily. Happy is 
Timothy to be trained by one who knows the quali- 
fications and exalts them in his own person. Paul 
recounts prophecies and special gifts — the unfeigned 
faith, good conscience, and nurture under choicest 
teachers from childhood — urges him to abide in the 
things learned, to hold fast his convictions, and to 
be strong in Christ. On such foundations build 
courage, diligence, health, and purity, enjoy read- 
ing and meditation, preach as a man approved of 
God, a workman not abashed who rightly divides 
the word of truth, and as a citizen be an example 
to all other citizens in conduct, in faith, in love, and 
in valor. 

Timothy, the opposite of those who, ever learn- 
ing, never know the truth, is open-minded — the 
normal attitude of true preachers. The open mind, 
the pure heart, finds God, walks with him, and is 
transformed into the glory of his own image. Love 
the truth, seek the truth, do the truth with every 
window open toward Jerusalem is an apostolic 
formula for power, a divine statute of survival; 
and the world needs such a truth-loving ministry 
today more than ever. Welcome the critics, who 
may have keener minds, though without honest love 
of the truth they are not surer guides. Luther 
would lose himself for the truth; Erasmus would 
lose the truth for himself. Luther the duller is 
the truer ; and passing by the scholar we pay tribute 
to the monk who loved the truth. 

[•48] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

Be noble! and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping but never dead, 
Shall rise in majesty to meet thine own. 

The differences of the divine library show the 
differences of the writers and of their times, for 
every age has its own birthmarks. The prophet of 
old, first a preacher to his own generation, has 
therein the hiding of his power; rightly to divide 
the word of truth is to drive the ploughshare in 
straight furrows; it is that ministers, rightly to 
apply Christianity, must know the signs of the 
times. 

It is a day of drift; now hard by rocks of the 
Unknowable, and now by blast furnaces of the 
spiritistic all-knowable. It is a day of surprises, a 
day of swing; many not rooted are swept like chaff 
before winds of doctrine. Men swing from the un- 
knowable to infallibility in the morning, from un- 
belief to sacerdotalism at noon, and from material- 
ism to spiritism at night; they have no anchorage. 
Oceans have both surface and deeper currents ; there 
is also a drift to ethics and morals and spirituality, 
and the dismal science becomes a moral science. 
Wholesome is the drift from theories to things, 
from philosophies to facts and the deep hunger for 
God. John, disciple of the inner life who gives us 
the heart of Jesus, begins his epistle with scientific 
proofs; the Word of life is the true God; hearing, 
seeing, handling, they know with joy the Eternal 
Life. This, followed by the deepest spiritual ex- 

[49] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

periences, makes that epistle one of the best anti- 
dotes to some false teachings so popular today. 

It is a chameleon-colored day with varieties of 
Christians and specimens of the varying types in 
the pulpit. Some Orientals holding their confes- 
sions and their flowing robes alike loosely, can hide 
reserved opinions or skip from one extreme to an- 
other at an hour's notice. Some windmill brethren, 
swirling the popular above the profitable, move with 
any wind as mists driven by a squall. Others scoff 
at what they are ignorant of, or are as hour-glass 
followers, more Galatian than Ephesian. Like peo- 
ple, like priest; the itching ears find preachers to 
tickle them. 

It is a day of greed and scorn, of questions and 
pride of intellect, of vice and crime ; men chant the 
praises of fog and canonize ignorance. It is a day 
of high fever; the speculative spirit seizes many in 
religion as in business. Such conditions and worse 
existed in Ephesus; hence Paul rouses Timothy to 
the difficulties as well as to the divine guidance in 
carrying out his ministry. Form and method have 
greatly changed in this twentieth century, but the 
greed and pride, the arrogance and idolatry even of 
that old city differently cloaked, curse our cities to- 
day. The truth and spirit with which Paul meets 
them, and with which we must meet them, are un- 
changed. He does not cry, " New lamps for old," 
but with new oil makes old lamps burn clearer and 
to send true light from that far-away day unto our 

[50] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

eyes and hearts. Humanity has fallen, is fallen, and 
will fall, but even its derelicts and wrecks are above 
price. Paul would have Timothy a spiritual Great- 
heart to love men out of their sins. 

Barnabas to save Antioch goes to Tarsus for 
Paul, the greatest service Barnabas ever rendered 
that city, his generation, the whole religious world 
of that time, and the Christianity of today. What 
journey is worth more for the world's well-being 
than that short trip? Barnabas is not only a son of 
consolation but a son of Issachar who knows what 
Israel ought to do. The gospel for all men and 
for all time that Paul developed at Antioch, is our 
present need. We can magnify it, for we know 
Christ, yesterday, today, and forever the same per- 
sistent personality, is adapted for and to be inter- 
preted unto every creature. Every age needs a 
restatement of theological as of ethical views, for 
who serves not his own generation with fidelity will 
not truly serve any generation. 

Some array creed against conduct, some exalt 
speculative thought above exact inquiry, and some 
exalt exact inquiry above the spiritual perception of 
truth. Timothy had such a fight, ministers have al- 
ways to meet this kind, and Paul points the way to 
victory; but the war must be waged again and again. 
Christianity is practical, not speculative, not merely 
beautiful and helpful, but necessary to life. Man 
cannot live by bread alone. Timothy must bear 
with wrong thinkers and wrong-doers, in meekness 

[51] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

and patience instruct them, for God may give them 
repentance, awake them to soberness, and clutch 
them out of the snares of demons. 

Days of adversity are mothers of the highest 
faiths and forces; our God gives honey out of the 
rocks. Days of peril are days of opportunity and 
power and may be days of greatest hope. The 
crisis of the church is to the glory of the Christ. 
Clearer thinking, truer devotion, and stronger cour- 
age appear and increased assurance that the gospel 
of God is equal to the sin of any age. Ethics and 
ologies cannot change the carnal mind; but the 
Christ who died, the one cure for man's sin, is the 
power of God unto salvation to every believer. Mix 
nothing with truth when you preach, and mix noth- 
ing with the love of truth when you prepare. Study 
knowing that you and your hearers are born for 
eternity, preach knowing that you and your hearers 
have only today to live and that God will give the 
increase. Science and art, literature and philosophy 
may flourish, but sin will flourish more, and men 
fall because sin is the strong man. Feather your 
arrows but know that only the gospel of the glory 
of God conquers the strong man. " In all ages 
the men whose determinations are swayed by refer- 
ence to the most distant ends, have been held to be 
possessed of the highest intelligence." Paul thirsts 
for the horizons of truth, and with a long look 
ahead taking in life and death and God, he indicates 
and illustrates the heart of the gospel. 

[52] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

Preach the great truths; dabbling with pleasing 
texts may tempt men to build on sand, careless of 
underpinning until the storm is upon them. Scrip- 
ture is full of great themes, and on such real meat 
great souls are fed. " Come to Jesus," " Only be- 
lieve," are true, but are not a full gospel. " What 
must I do to be saved ? " is good. " What must I 
do since I am saved to come to the full knowledge 
of the truth ? " is better, for you are to bring men 
in to build them up. We are in no danger of be- 
coming too well acquainted with the Bible, and he 
is best fitted to preach who never lets up in study. 
The great truth of the cross is God's holy love 
and the great gift of the cross is the Holy Spirit. 
When you have read your New Testament through 
for the thousandth time, the real marrow, the spirit 
and life of its uncounted treasures will enrich both 
mind and heart. The late beloved Dr. Henry G. 
Weston for a series of years read his Testament 
through every month; no wonder his mind was 
saturated, not only with the language, but with 
the deepest spirit of this priceless book. 

Dramatic loyalty to truths may be rank dis- 
loyalty to the truth. The man who preaches con- 
tinuously on the Second Advent is an Adventist, 
not a Baptist. Under obligation first to Christ as 
the Head, then to the churches we serve, then to 
the church of God and the world in which we live, 
Baptists have respect to the whole counsel of God. 
Have no fear of digging deep, know the worth both 

[S3] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

of influence and effluence, and convert your findings 
of doctrine into life. 

Meet the demand of the age by a manly, spir- 
itual, truth-loving ministry. The organist must 
know his instrument, himself, and the music, not to 
exhibit himself or the organ, but rightly to render 
the music set before him. The physician must know 
the disease and the remedy, but more the body in 
which both are at work. So we must know sin 
and the soul, our chief work not to make sermons 
but to save men. We must shun fables and old 
wives' mysteries, for ours is a daylight gospel, " the 
sunburst of a new morn come to earth," and truth 
like the sun will be its own witness. Milton is 
right, " the very essence of truth is plainness and 
brightness." Our own Dr. John A. Broadus was a 
prince of preachers, and pithy plainness was the 
pearl of his preaching. A little less ambition to be 
notable would be of vast benefit. Give fact and 
truth as God gives them ; no scientist can add to the 
corn a new life germ, and a child's little finger may 
take from a plum the bloom that all the chemists 
in the land cannot restore. Give the gospel as God 
gives it, and the seed which is the word of God 
today will tomorrow be the children of God. The 
twentieth century cannot add to Christ's words of 
spirit and life. 

Preach the word positively with the note of au- 
thority — the note, not the air of authority — do not 
play the priest before your people. The gospel of 

[54] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

authority by a man of humility will bring forth 
grapes of Eschol. He who knows how to pray well 
preaches well, for we lose authority when we lose 
intimacy with Christ. 

One " I know " of Paul outweighs a thousand of 
the best thinkers' " It may be." After fourteen 
days of storm and fog his " I believe God " gives 
the ship a new captain and the soldiers a new 
leader. A fiddler who strikes the right chord may 
bring down a metal bridge, but a man of faith may 
build up a bridge over which cowards marching be- 
come heroes. Truth clearly put in the heat of con- 
viction sets in motion responsive chords in the soul 
for edification. We suffer from four things, un- 
reality, uncertainty, satisfaction with ourselves, 
and unripeness, and we soon learn that a craven 
leader cannot have a brave following. Have faith 
in God and courage; like begets like, and for this 
we are given the spirit of power and of love and 
of self-control. Faith's witness is activity; nothing 
so manifests its special qualities as intercession, for 
the patience, the obedience, and the victory of faith 
are written large in prayer for others. True prayer, 
real fellowship with Christ, the touch of his spirit 
with our spirits, the direct inreach of his being 
brooding over our being, will give us courage to 
face Satan himself and not flinch. 

Give the truth its spiritual and practical use. 
Granite rocks are pierced by drills faced with small 
diamonds, and hard hearts may be pierced when we 

[55] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

face our message with clear truth. Truth, mark 
you, not on the right or the left or in the midde of 
the road, but as truth is in Jesus. David winced 
when Nathan said, " Thou art the man." Our 
Scripture is for right thinking, yet more for right 
living, its truths real and quickening, indeed, but of 
full worth when they draw us near to God and 
grow the fruit of lives pleasing to him. The mes- 
sage must burn our own souls if we would set 
others afire with zeal or hear them say, " Did not 
our hearts burn within us when he opened to us 
the Scriptures ? " 

Do not ask a hundred people to give you thirty 
minutes each, and then give them an aimless palaver 
or a show T er of verbal pyrotechnics, for you would 
rob both God and man. We may waste fifty hours 
in one service hour, and we who hide ourselves be- 
hind a manuscript should recall Dr. William R. 
Williams' saying : " There is extemporaneous writ- 
ing as well as extemporaneous speaking/' Do your 
own thinking and think thoroughly if you would 
save your hearers from mental marasmus. Sheep 
kept lean by baled hay will thrive on fresh-mown 
hay cut from the field of your experience. Com- 
positors might set up and proof-readers go through 
the entire New Testament and be nothing bettered. 
One man saying, " I was blind and now I see," and 
a beggar, once lame but now healed, were stronger 
in testimony for Christ than all the strength of 
opposition to him in the Sanhedrin. 

[56] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

Living personality is emphasized: Thee, Thy, 
Thou. Timothy must stand in his own shoes and ac- 
complish his own ministry ; he must guard what he 
has, keep himself pure, be sober, be urgent, and 
kindle the gift entrusted to him. No one moves 
another himself unmoved, and no minister changes 
the beliefs or doings of men without deep soul con- 
victions. We must be something more than bank- 
tellers paying out other people's money. Is Jesus 
removed from us by nineteen centuries, or is he 
born in us and living in us the life we live to- 
day? Whoso preaches Christ must have Christ's 
life and Christ's character, be a true light-bearer 
and a real life-giver. Jesus lives; it is not an in- 
fluence or spiritual process; his whole ministry is a 
personal fact and truth today when everything tends 
to break down personality. Mass movements and 
group movements and block movements are un- 
doubtedly doing good, but the individual must not 
be crushed into dust and the idea of his personal 
accountability pounded out of him. 

Give yourself your own soul, your own gifts, the 
coin minted in your own mind; but do not fall in 
love with your own phrase-making; your words at 
the best may be only as feather-tips for God's 
arrows. The true minister gives himself to his 
work ; his body to weariness and to want if need be, 
his spirit parted among his people for their cheer 
and comfort. No stingy self-reserve, no prudential 
economy can we practise if we would do full service 

[57] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

for God. An educated man is an invincible force 
when unconditionally surrendered to Christ; but a 
man absorbed in himself will not only have a fool 
for his friend, and a poor one at that, but be as 
empty of power as a soap-bubble ; he is most empty 
usually who is most full of himself. 

The vessel of honor of wood or gold is one sanc- 
tified unto Christ alone. Who gives himself with 
all his might through all his life to all that God 
has entrusted to him, absorbed in the one work laid 
upon him with a self-devotion that involves his en- 
tire being, is the true minister. As the iron in the 
fire and the fire in the iron give white heat, so with 
him in the light and the light in him, men will 
walk in his light as a man of God fully furnished. 
Lamps give light, and the light glorifies the lamp. 
The pagan was right who begged for men of hot 
hearts to tell of Jesus' love ; for then our words will 
flow and burn like molten lava, and our lips will be 
as if touched with coals of fire. 

Conviction and consecration, action and discipline, 
are all emphasized by Paul. Aggressive and con- 
tinuous urgency must attest Timothy's zeal in ser- 
vice. Christian ministers should be the best evi- 
dences of Christianity, epistles read and known of 
all men, large-type Christians, that he who runs 
may read. We may never equal Timothy ; but mak- 
ing the best of ourselves as true witnesses of the 
living Christ we may become own brothers of Paul 
and Timothy. 

[58] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

We must be true to ourselves for the sake of 
honesty. As soon steal another's false teeth or his 
wig as his gestures or the tones of his voice. 
Spurgeon, Beecher, Brooks, and others have been 
unwilling models for many stuffed figures in our 
pulpits, but how can the bond-slaves of corruption 
give liberty to men? Paul does not urge Timothy 
to be original; a reputation for originality is often 
cheaply won, as we may see in the performances 
of some ministers and some evangelists. We may 
seem to make poor gold-leaf; but if it is the best 
we can make, and we have beaten it out ourselves, 
it will be of more worth to the Lord and to the peo- 
ple, not to say to ourselves also, than any we can 
steal. Let us be true to ourselves for growth; not 
height, but holiness we need ; not place, but the real 
fire from God. As examples to believers in word, 
in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity we should 
be what we would have others become, for the work 
of God in a man is the man. 

Those honors 
Which are without . . . place, riches, favor, 
Prizes of accident as of merit, 

come and go with the seasons. " He wrote much, 
but said little " no one could affirm of Paul. The 
light not born of earth or sea shines through all 
his letters, for when the world was lowest morally 
he preached and practised highest ideals and truths. 
Few authors are better known, and no human has 

[59] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

contributed more for the welfare of the world than 
he to whom the thing to be done became a part of 
his being and it must be done or he could not live. 
Timothy's ministry is supernatural ; called of God 
unto grace and authority, he credentials the gospel 
in his own person and work. Ambassadors for 
Christ have dignity enough in divine authority, at 
once our warrant and our fitness for the work and 
our pledge of victory in it. As well try to educate 
mummies as to train unregenerate men for Christ's 
ministry. 

He must speak 
Who calls for things that are not, and they come. 
The transformation of apostate man 
From fool to wise, from earthly to divine 
Is work for him who made him. 

The theology of the future will center in the 
leadership of Christ and the dominance of the spir- 
itual; above everything else it will emphasize the 
supernatural. Lamps without light, trees without 
fruit, fields without grass may abound, but never a 
ministry of power without the Spirit. Nebuchad- 
rezzar's great image sank down from gold to clay ; 
so the ministry sinks from the apostolic practice to 
that of many pretended successors. The image had 
the form of a man, and the good or the evil of the 
world is by or because of a man. Truth crushed 
to earth rises again when the man arises whom God 
has trusted to pick it up ; so Luther and many others 
glorify anew a spiritual ministry. Again to the 

[60] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

great image; the one mediator is the man Christ 
Jesus, to his own generation but clay, a good man 
but of Nazareth. Since then he lives and grows 
from clay to gold day by day, he the Coming Man 
and we his ministers, his servants " in Christ," 
grow with him. Called of God as Moses was and 
Paul, we must have the message, not in a book 
which may be a form empty as a chrysalis shell, but 
in our own souls as spirit and life. We must know 
it, love it, give it fully, and above all we must be 
the message. To us is entrusted the gospel of the 
glory of the happy God, and in us is to be witnessed 
its triumph. We find his gospel in his works, in his 
words, but more in himself ; and we his messengers 
after works and words must be in person his mes- 
sage. It is too easy to cry at us, " Heal thyself " ; 
if we do not show the power of God to subdue sin 
in our own souls, how can we bring men to trust 
God? The best do best, for being is the measure 
of doing, especially in the ministry of Christ, and 
he serves best who is most meek and lowly in 
heart. 

Timothy, keep yourself pure; only so can you 
bless an impure world, only so can you show your 
life-power comes down from above, only so can 
you lift men up to God. Gifts and graces, pulpits, 
churches, and Bibles are instruments to this end, 
that we save ourselves and others also. 

Feed with the word, but oh, far more 
Feed with a holy life. 

[61] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Our lives begin in a miracle, for Christ is born 
in us, and lead back to the miracle of miracles, to 
him who was dead and is alive again. Unless he 
lives in me I have no warrant to speak for him and 
no power to reveal him to others. The clouds that 
become the sun's chariots show the sun's glory. 
God is not afraid of paradoxes ; we alone truly live 
who have been crucified with Christ, and our " life 
under God is now one grand paradox of dependence 
and liberty." Power is in Christ ; not in something 
he says or does, but in him is the power of God to 
subdue and to save. " Christ is infinite spiritual 
energy in constant action." Three dominant say- 
ings, and all touching our ministry, are given twice 
each ; the work and its definite point — " preach the 
gospel to the poor " ; the work and its supply — 
" pray the Lord of the harvest for laborers " ; the 
work and its equipment — " As the Father sent me, 
I send you, receive ye the Holy Spirit." Hugh 
Miller is right, " Ministers when real are special 
creations of the grace of God." 

It is a royal privilege to live in such an age as 
this. An age of doubt? Bury it under the victory 
of faith that overcomes the world. An age of 
questions? Welcome, stimulate, and answer them 
out of our Bible and our own souls. Never fear 
when we have an open Bible between ourselves and 
our questioner. An age of half-truths? Let our 
light shine and give them the truth as truth is in 
Jesus. An age of war? Thank God, to be a good 

[62] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

soldier of Jesus Christ is not an empty phrase. 
Keep down fears by keeping up crystalline faith 
and courage. Timothy, do not think of my chains ; 
they are not worth thinking about ; be brave, stand 
up straight, and fight face forward. 

Hopes have precarious life ; 
They are blighted, withered, snapped short off 
In vigorous youth, and turned to rottenness ; 
But faithfulness can feed on suffering, 
And knows no disappointment. 

Covet a full, round ministry, now preacher, now 
teacher, now pastor, now evangelist, and in all a 
true shepherd. Forego no portion of your service. 
Be as ready to herald as to teach, to train as to 
evangelize, and so accomplish your ministry, 
Timothy. The path of honor ascends from among 
our every-day duties. Jesus was great, not in 
science or art or politics, but in religion, and here 
his greatness arises out of all-round service to God 
and humanity. " Never man so spake ! " True, and 
this speaking was in the ordinary affairs faced 
from day to day and in the main among the com- 
mon people. We are lured by the extraordinary, 
but the ordinary is the most needful; to cheer the 
heart, to guide the conduct, to appreciate men and 
share comradeship with them, is worth more than 
logic or fine writing or epigrams flung at them from 
the desk. Much power and great joy will come 
from doing well the common duties of every day. 

[63] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but what thou livest, 
Live well, how long or short permit to heaven. 

He comes to be ruler over many things who is 
faithful in that which is least. We ministers have 
the right to account ourselves the most highly 
honored of men, as we ought to be on earth or in 
heaven the happiest of men. Greater honor than 
the prime minister of the proudest nation have we 
as ambassadors of the King of kings. The Judaistic 
Jehovah was no match for the Roman Jupiter; but 
Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, is more 
than a match for Roman law and power. It was 
not boasting that led Paul to say, " I can do all 
things through Christ who strengthens me." 

All great actions reveal at length 
Unguessed resources of lowly strength. 

We who are " the heirs of all the ages " wear 
the highest honors ever conferred upon men in that 
we may live and serve at the apex of all the oppor- 
tunities and joys known to humanity. It is greater 
to preach Christ now than in any age of the world's 
history. Moral earnestness and real religion are 
more alive today than in any day I have ever known, 
and I had rather be a minister of the gospel of God 
than hold any other position to which I could be 
called. 1 

1 1 was ordained as pastor of the First Baptist Church, Perth 
Amboy, N. J., June 12, 1862. 

[64] 



A COMPLETED MINISTRY 

Paul and Nero; the slave of Christ and the tool 
of the Antichrist ; the veteran with the marks of his 
Master like a general who bares his bosom that 
his soldiers may see the scars of his wounds and 
the tyrant who is the crown and flower of vice and 
guilt; the ambassador of Christ and the deified 
autocrat of paganism; he who being poor made 
many rich and the incarnate Nemesis of degrada- 
tion, these two from other realms look back to earth. 
Upon that mighty kingdom whose throne Nero dis- 
honored the sun has set forever; but the Sun of 
Righteousness arises forever upon Paul's poor 
saints whom he led into the kingdom and patience 
of Jesus. Not even David can bless God for his 
throne and kingdom as a minister from his pulpit 
and pastorate may cry out, " I am thankful to Him 
who made me strong — even Christ Jesus our Lord — 
because He has judged me to be faithful, and has 
put me into his service. " 



[65] 



IV 

DIVINE METHODS IN HUMAN 
REDEMPTION 



DIVINE METHODS IN HUMAN 
REDEMPTION 1 



As one who gazed on the Invisible God, he (Moses) was 
unflinching. These, all these, were they who through that 
faith received tokens of God's approval, yet these did not 
actually receive the fulfilment of God's promise. Why so? 
Because God, with respect to us, looked onward to a higher 
blessing than was here attained by them, so that they 
might not reach that perfect state ere we could join them. — 
(Translation by Arthur S. Way.) 

TO see God in the past but fail to see him today 
is the worst heresy. That "God has a plan, 
and that history is the working out of his plan in 
human affairs " Hebrews, not Hegel, first affirms. 

To " open as an essay, move as a sermon, close 
as a letter," and maintain high literary excellence 
shows the master-hand of a religious genius. A 
prose poem aglow with ideals, rich in gems as a 
diamond pocket, transparent in theme and course of 
thought, its treasures enhance its timeliness. 

Days when Scriptures and symbols are as an 
empty chrysalis, mildew stains the purest rites, 
Moses decreases, Jesus increases, their granary be- 
come a grave, are dark days for God's elect. 

1 Given at the fiftieth anniversary of the Long Island Baptist 
Association, in Brooklyn, N. Y., October 17, 1916. The writer, a 
constituent member, is the only living incorporator. 

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THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Christianity sweeps the lands " like a prairie fire," 
but Jews follow their nation's bier as mourners 
without hope, and Christian Jews, seeing the foun- 
dations sink under their feet, are in a strait whether 
to rush back to what is falling or to clutch at the 
hope set before them. 

Hebrews traces the olive tree from root to fruit, 
gives triumph for defeat, and leads them to the city 
that has foundations. Like sweet waters in a bitter 
sea this reopens a fountain for the house of David, 
and the sinless Captain of Salvation, Pioneer and 
Perfector of faith, lifts them out of the fear of 
death into the life of love and service. Christianity 
fits the old Mosaism as the nick of an arrow fits 
the string of a bow, the second covenant unlocks the 
first, and the cross illumines their Scriptures and 
symbols. Israel's diadem crowns him who gives 
them more than the holiest found in the temple 
and does what Judaism could not do, " makes 
perfect.'" 

It is a bold challenge for an unknown author to 
wreathe the giants of Israel with new laurels, build 
a hall of fame for heroes rich toward God, and then 
deny them perfectness without himself and his asso- 
ciates. No second-hand scribe is he, but a true seer; 
no clock set by other clocks, but a sunlit dial. To 
him Christ is " The Apostle of God," from whom 
by vertical, not horizontal, lines is a true apostolic 
succession in the priesthood of believers. As sol- 
diers capture a battery and turn its guns on their 

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DIVINE METHODS 



foes, so he turns arguments against Jesus into 
proofs of his greatness. He visions " the far-off 
divine event." 

'Twas but a step from out our muddy street 
Of earth, on to the pavement all of pearl. 

Yet he treats religion as a present need, not as a 
heavenly thing. 

At home in history, rich in imagination, alert in 
logic, full of sympathy, and thinking in terms of 
humanity, he flings forth ideals and truths as big as 
the mind can grapple. We claim to think in world 
terms, but his world spans time and space, weaves 
into its tapestry all generations, leaps from the first 
earthly home to the eternal home of the household 
of God, and crams the entire survey into a sentence. 
Thought sags under low ideals, but ideals whose 
kernel is love to God and man lift thought to the 
nth degree, and truth not posited on time or place 
saves itself and its torch-bearer. 

He emphasizes unity and perfectness for the re- 
deemed, unity in constituency and service, its bond 
an organizing life. Abel, Enoch, and Noah in re- 
mote days ; Abram, Moses, and David in early Is- 
rael ; Peter, John, and Paul in later days, are bound 
into one bundle of life with God. 

It is a zigzag hero line, and Baptist councils 
would not approve them all; yet as in the hilltop 
conference Moses and Elijah, Peter, James, and 
John, with Jesus in the midst, are one, so this 

[71] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

richest cluster of God's jewels ever strung is in one 
chain. Pilgrim fathers on highlands of divine com- 
panionship, and multitudes yet to begin their pil- 
grimage, " the host above, below," vanguard and 
rearward, sowers and reapers, parents and children, 
in one comradeship move along the upward way. 

. On they move 
Indissolubly firm; nor straitening vale, nor wood divides 
Their perfect ranks. 

All wait until David the shepherd lad comes into 
the house; so will all wait until the last lost sheep 
is brought back to the household of God. Abel 
and Paul, Noah and John differ greatly as do lamb 
and tiger, dove and elephant, but God is justified of 
his children. There is no room for doubt that the 
ideals of one bread, one body, one fold, and one 
bride are real entities. Come down, and we will 
believe," his foes shouted; he did more; he came up 
from the grave. " Go tell my disciples and Peter " 
knits them into oneness. Man, the pearl of great 
price, drew him down, for God sees more in us 
than we see in ourselves, and he is satisfied when 
man is made new in the perfect image and likeness 
of the Father. Is everything going to smash, is the 
mystery of life to end in " the ashes of moral de- 
feat " ? Look higher to see how God uses the 
world's waste as raw material for sonship, 

to angel his new heaven 
Explores the lowest hell. 

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DIVINE METHODS 



" Bezaleel, the brazier, may have been rated above 
Aaron the priest," Bushnell says, adding, " and I 
really think he was." Who ever came nearer being 
rated with Shakespeare than Bunyan, the tinker? 

" The religious phenomena of life transcend all 
human science," for finites, fired by immutable ideas 
and truths, feed on the infinite and love mortal 
things with the zest of natures immortal. " Look- 
ing before and after " — knowledge and faith to him, 
thoroughfares, not blind alleys — wise in appraising 
the near and sane in weighing the remote, he en- 
riches the old by the new, and knows both so well he 
dares forecast the future. A prophet artist, his 
sketch, both ample and sublime, opens a rift in the 
cloud and lo ! their glory streams through who with 
shackled hands salute the promises. Who feared 

not the hungry fire, 
With its caverns of burning light, 

now shine without spot or wrinkle. They wore 
their pains like roses as they went up to God. 
" God's own have the perfectness which he en- 
gages to secure, for God no more makes half a 
promise than tailors make half a pair of trousers. 
Those of whom the world was not worthy are 

Like wild myrtles, which preserve 

Their hoard of perfumes for the dying hour 

When rudeness crushes them. 

The Lord's trees, the big sequoias set between the 
shoulders of the mountains, wrestle with storm and 



[73] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

tempest, defy cold and heat, sink their roots deep 
into the fastnesses of the rocks, and grow hardy by 
every conflict. So God builds great souls. Hazards 
and perils, denials and betrayals, bitter persecutions, 
fire and sword are his tools to carve beauty and 
strength of character. When mummies clamor for 
new clothes, Vanity Fair bargain-counters may sell 
ready-made character. " Let him slay me if he 
do but reign " — a proud mother's word is chaff be- 
side God's word, " Though he slay me yet will I 
trust in him." Satan still sifts wheat and beats out 
harvests of golden grain for the barn floor of the 
Lord. Bonds out of Christ bitter as gall are bitter- 
sweet in Christ, for sufferings may be " the scab- 
bards of the sword of the Spirit." To suffer with 
him is to reign with him who is made perfect 
through suffering. A saint is a soldier, not a paste- 
board man in a painted world. God burns in his 
hall-mark, and the many sons brought to glory 
bear the owner's brand. 

Completeness is in Christ; the Father's perfect 
Son is humanity's perfect man. Smoothness and 
beauty in the sea of glass prove it is mingled 
with fire. Who walk with Christ on that sea are 
white like crystal, for they washed their robes and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb. In the 
transfiguration, glory shone through his garments, 
and so they, all pure within, must wear white. 
Resistless as the river in the ocean God's purposes 
sweep us on to our desired haven in Christ. 

[74] 



DIVINE METHODS 



God's goodness flows around our incompleteness, 
Round our restlessness his rest. 

God provides the better things for us, working 
out his own good pleasure by life and death, men 
and nations, races and ages, the past and the un- 
trodden future, alike too holy to do wrong and 
too mighty to lean on helpers. He moves on circles 
so great it takes many centuries filled with the 
countless deeds of countless men to finish any de- 
sign of his. He " notches the nations' calendars," 
yokes up the pagan powers as hewers of wood and 
drawers of water for his kingdom, times all events 
to honor Christ, and skips no least detail of life in 
nature or in man. Lily's growth and sparrow's fall, 
Abram, his altar-building and his servant's dress, 
Egypt and the bulrush boat for the boy, Jeremiah, 
also the rags for his arms when drawn out of the 
pit, concern God who gleans field corners, gathers 
fragments, and makes all things work together for 
good. No man or event is viewed apart from the 
whole plan of God. 

Cargoes of circumstances and freight-trains of 
mud invoiced " Progress," blind captains using 
knowledge to deceive and religion to destroy, whole 
armies and great nations, have tumbled into the 
gulf of oblivion. A few Pharaohs and Neros with 
" mouth of iron and heart of lead, wielding a king's 
power with a slave's spirit," history gibbets to show 
that bad men are not the fruit of modern days. 



[75] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

If Stephen dies, fear not ; Paul girt with more than 
a double portion of his spirit rises to carry the cross 
onward. If Judas walks free " with the silver in 
his hands," fear not, " God holds the reins over the 
devil's coursers/' We also, more than conquerors, 
are to see enemies fall as lightning till " as a god 
self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead." 

When their sufferings were as if hell's geysers 
leaped up to meet the overturned vials of heaven's 
wrath, into the furnace fire as into molten wax God 
set a new seal of Messiahship, whose enemies should 
become the footstool of his feet, and transformed 
the tongues of flame into pentecostal tongues for 
the spread of his gospel through the Roman Empire. 
The quaking mountain at whose foot Moses and 
his people trembled, would become a mere incident 
in contrast with the rocking to and fro of earth 
and heaven for the bringing in of the kingdom 
which could not be shaken, and in the height of the 
storm the author of Hebrews sings a song of triumph 
unto the Christ of God, " the same yesterday, today, 
and forever." In the heart of a cyclone it is said 
there is a perfect calm; so when the storm sweeps 
over us and the deck dips and rises as if it would 
shake itself free and cast us into the deep, the mind 
is calm, knowing that the chief things cannot be 
moved, and to these we cling till the tempest has 
spent its fury and passed us by. 

The ideal, the lodestone of the heart, becomes the 
actual joy of the life, hope anchor's within the veil, 

[76] 



DIVINE METHODS 



and faith claims the future as the experience of the 
present. While in the body pent we who believe 
do enter into rest, come to the New Jerusalem, and 
to the spirits of just men made perfect. Gustavus 
Adolphus, leading the German Protestants, saying, 
" Henceforth there remains no rest for me save that 
which is eternal," enters into the rest of God. w All 
the world's masters feel the tug of the future and 
greet the unseen with a cheer. " 

History, experience, and reason are warp and 
woof for the author, who, with clear brain and 
warm heart weaves his great design. He shows the 
hidden springs of power that moved the giants of 
old, exalts the obedience and victory of their faith, 
clothes a great literature in the thought of his time, 
paints the nation's progress in true perspective, re- 
veals the new life Christ has given, and converts the 
whole into meat and drink for the men of his day 
while before and behind at the center and on every 
side is " the living God," as he fondly calls him. 

From shore sand to star-dust, from atoms to 
angels, the universe is ablaze with God. " The more 
the heart is crowded with God's presence, the 
greater room there is for more of his presence and 
for all the things in which God is concerned." To 
change a hero's word who gave his life for his peo- 
ple, we cry: " Make room for God! Make room for 
God ! " Some words are overworked." " Problem " 
is such a word. The one world's problem, our 
greatest need, is to know God; it is life eternal to 



[77] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

know God and Jesus Christ. What God is and 
what man should be is the sum of revelation. But 
how may God be known? " 

We know each other through mutual self -revela- 
tion and mutual self-surrender and mutual coopera- 
tion in the highest things. Luther's wedding-ring 
may illustrate the three ; it was engraved : " Martin- 
Katherine. Each for the other. Both for God." 
Turn back the pages to the law of the altar-fire, " It 
shall not go out," and every synagogue witnesses 
that he who gave the order lives today. Shall God 
be less alive to us ? In that fire as in the fire of the 
bush that saved Moses are first the natural con- 
stituents, light, heat, and motion; then the spiritual 
elements, for light, heat, and motion spell Vision, 
Passion, and Action. 

What hinders us from knowing God ? Ignorance 
and sin. But to remove these Christ is the Light of 
the world and the Lamb of God. The vision of the 
unseen bears fruit in truest lives and purest deeds, 
but every man must see the invisible for himself. 
Shall Moses defy the king whom he sees for the 
King whom he cannot see, and God be less alive 
to us? 

Not more light we ask, O God, 
But eyes to see what is. 

Unseen forces the mightiest known we have the 
fatal power to hinder. Countless waves of light 
bathe the eyes, but the optic nerve limits what we 

[78] 



DIVINE METHODS 



use; so we limit God's impact on the soul. We 
need to cry : " Open thou mine eyes ; let me behold 
thy wondrous works." 

The vision's intenseness imperils its fulness and 
tempts us to shrink its volume into " the thimble of 
our capacity." A view of God brings larger views 
of truth and warmer love for truth, more desire 
to know, and more courage to do, his will. Connect 
the richer views of life with the larger views of 
God, or you pay the cost of unreality in religion and 
of death-damp in society. In a Hoffman painting 
Christ has the upward look with the downward 
reach ; having these with shining faces, warm hearts, 
and strong arms, we could meet and move men. 

Men who assert that the church is passe have not 
seen God. As another says, " When the blue fades 
out of the sky, the mountains drink up the sea, the 
heat of the sun freezes in, and God's purposing will 
breaks down," then may the church go down and 
out. Yet to look around us we may well ask, " Do 
our cities need an altar ' To an unknown God ' ? " 
Men who know God would not spend a Sunday 
morning stealing and destroying milk being sent for 
the needs of a great city. Shall not the God of 
Nineveh hear the cry of the children robbed of 
their food? Men who know God will not give up 
their work and then kill men who are willing to 
work. When men to whom we trust our lives in 
the cars must work behind iron bars to fend off 
death, we may well ask, " Have the Goths and the 



[79] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Vandals come to destroy our civilization ? " A 
welter of blood across the sea and here a holocaust 
of crime and death startling this generation seem 
to show that God is unknown. 

Vision first ; then Passion. God loves and hates ; 
until we know him as a consuming fire we do not 
know him at all. Back of life, as back of war, 
passions burn or principles shine, and what is may 
bring to pass what ought to be. 

Law and goodness, love and force, 
Are wedded fast beyond divorce. 

Science and art, education and philosophy, com- 
merce and industry, law and politics, national or in- 
ternational, are allies of God's kingdom, and they 
will shine when touched with religious passion as 
the sun-flushed clouds of the western sky. " The 
great ideals are Christian ideals, and the greatest 
scientific study of the world is within the rim of 
the religious life/' 

Lowell said, " There is enough dynamite in the 
New Testament to blow all our institutions into 
instruments of the kingdom of God if rightly ap- 
plied/ ' True, and the answer is that the gospel of 
God has " power enough to transform our institu- 
tions into instruments of the kingdom of God if 
rightly applied. " Contact is as necessary to the car 
as the power-house, and truth to have its full force 
must be incarnate in life. We sorely need deep moral 
energy and conviction ; correcting the fathers' faults 

[80] 



DIVINE METHODS 



at the cost of losing their virtues is a poor exchange. 
Splendidly organized, we need the dynamic of pas- 
sion for Christ and man to achieve our tasks. 
Qothe concepts of God in terms of the present, and 
translate the love of Christ into the love of the race 
to serve the men of today, for spiritual truth un- 
responsive to its age stings itself to death. When 
our hearts burn within us as he talks with us by 
the way, our blood earnestness will win men. It 
will do us good to take ship with Paul and hear him 
cry out in the night, " I believe God, and it shall be 
as he hath said." 

Beside Raphael's " Transfiguration " paint " The 
Next Hour," when Christ at the foot of the moun- 
tain makes whole the demented boy. We may be 
too busy to pray, and too selfish to sacrifice for the 
unsaved, so busy trying to understand God that we 
neglect to love and serve him. 

Shall the Hebrew singer who chanted, " The 
Lord will perfect that which concerneth me," have 
God nearer than you and I? Shall he who sang, 
" Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all 
generations," have vision and passion to find in 
God a home that you and I do not share? Vision 
and passion decaying, mind and heart are starved, 
then lost, and only an empty form is left. Said 
one, " My mother's living presence nerves me every 
day." Many of us who respond to that should say 
with deeper passion, " The reality of God's presence 
girds me every hour." 



[81] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush aflame with God ; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes ; 
The rest sit round it, and pick blackberries. 

Are we berry-pickers or God's seers? The man 
" without passion for God not worth his weight in 
dust " may be worth his weight in gold if God truly 
abides in him. Passion for righteousness, truth, 
and law are not by-products of faith. 

Fine gold has not perished when the flame 
Seizes upon it with consuming glow. 

Vision soon grows into vocation, and passion into 
Power. It takes a Paul to triumph over a thorn 
in the flesh and to withstand Peter to his face. 
God does not give blue-prints for the house we build 
on the rock or logarithms to check up each day of 
life's journey; it is enough to say, " Lo, I am with 
you all the days." 

Who walks with God shuns the lines of least re- 
sistance, makes straight paths that the lame be not 
turned out of the way, climbs hills of difficulty, 
fights against every wrong and esteems the rebuke 
of God greater riches than the praises of friends. 
Who walks with God puts his purse-strings into the 
hands of his great Comrade, covets the hardest 
fields in which to work, and loiters not when he 
should labor, for spiritual indulgences may work 
more harm than those which Luther fought. Who 

[82] 




DIVINE METHODS 



walks with God in going about doing good will 
tread out with his feet all lines of separation, sec- 
tional, national, or racial, yet will be patient with 
others, remembering that while it took only forty 
hours to get Israel out of Egypt, it took more than 
forty years to get Egypt out of Israel. 

Walking with God today must be under the con- 
ditions of life today; in the thick of affairs, amid 
the crowding and the cursing, through all the racket 
and the noise we may hear his voice and walk with 
him undisturbed if we will. Follow as did Caleb, 
believe as did Paul, endure as did Moses, and then 
in every church action and in every act of the asso- 
ciation, without presuming we also may say, " It 
seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit. ,, 

To sing psalms is good, to open playgrounds for 
the children may be better and a more immediate 
duty. Is God " covered with a cloud " so that your 
prayers cannot pass through? The cloud is born 
of the marshes at your feet; get out and clean up 
the marshes, and your prayers will get up to God. 
To prove that God lives in our religion today right- 
eousness, love, and service must thrive in Wall 
Street and in every street. If we cannot show God 
at work in New York, volumes of proof that he was 
in Jerusalem will fail to create response. How God 
came to Abram means little if God does not come to 
us so that we can give him to the people whom we 
serve. If God speaks to us from some distant age 
only, we are done for. 



[83] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

Granted that God is in our churches, some of us, 
like Jacob, seem not to know it until the meeting is 
over. To reach men God must be seen in our 
streets and shops. Jews kept windows open toward 
Jerusalem, and we must keep our windows open 
toward Brooklyn. 

Judaism clinging to its great men seems foolish, 
but what if we cling to the founders of this Asso- 
ciation, or of the churches in which we work, 
cling to their truths and ways ? How are we better 
than the Jews? It is "love's labor lost" to put 
twentieth-century wine into first-century bottles. 
Hezekiah breaks Moses' serpent, Paul changes 
Moses' statutes, and we must welcome new truths. 

The boom evangelists have now may become a 
bomb and gusts of feeling blow out lamps of reason. 
Pastors silent and churches closed for weeks to 
hear one man speak and have one big meeting! 
What about the promise to two or three " with 
Jesus in the midst " ? Bring God to men, lift men 
to God, is every man's commission. Absorbed in 
the wheel's whirl at the circumference we may 
lose sight of the center. 

Efficiency is our great word. Jesus says, " My 
Father works, and I work." What captain of in- 
dustry puts in more hours a day than the Captain 
of our salvation ? Write " holiness on the bells of 
the horses " and follow the mechanic who lived as 
" The Apostle of God ! " Who now so walks and 
lives says, " For me to live is Christ to live." 

[84] 



DIVINE METHODS 



Modern ideals are here: the law of continuity — 
the universe not a chaos, but a cosmos founded in 
reason and truth, and " a survival of the individual 
personality after death in a form which makes 
possible the continuity of the connecting life. ,, 
Edison, Marconi could not stay the mighty forces 
God set free. When traitors try to shift the chan- 
nels of the river of life, 

Have faith in God, 

Calm and free from every care, 

On any shore since God is there. 

Life, thought, truth, and ideals, God's gifts, abide 
amid all earth's changes. Men live and die, nations 
rise and fall, but " the one eternal purpose behind 
all history will move resistless as the flow of the 
tides, for the ultimate character of God as of the 
universe is to be judged by its final product." 

Who yields himself to God builds on an abiding 
foundation. Perish our things if deeds of service 
for Christ live. " The floweret may die, but the 
fruit scents the plain." 

Honor the things that were, honor more things 
that are, but highest honor to things that are to be. 
I believe that generations coming will surpass all 
gone before, and coming songs will reach triumph- 
ing notes man has never yet touched. Perfect your 
instruments and your singers, for future music will 
exceed our best. Each period must praise His work 
to the next in loftier scale of power. 



[85] 



THE RELIGION OF JESUS 

I look for more devotion, more revivals of pure 
religion, greater beneficence, and larger revealings 
of God. Blessed are you younger brethren who 
will see and share in such abundant life, from our 
Father. Where victory perches today means little; 
where the exhaustless riches are means everything. 
Vast the difference — having God on our side for a 
day and being on his side for time and eternity. To 
see darkly now, then to see him, is as a step from 
quest and glory. Some day 

We shall behold Thee, face to face, 

God, and in thy light retrace 

How in all we loved here, still wast thou. 

I believe that the world, ever in his hands, is in 
his keeping now, that God who was with the men 
of old, is with us now, that he who spoke to them 
of his will and work, is speaking to us now, and 
that as he gave to them, so today he is giving to 
us many discoveries of his truth. 

Here let us pause, our quest forego, 
Enough for us to feel and know 
That He in whom the cause and end, 
The past and future meet and blend, 
Speaks not alone of words of fate 
Which worlds destroy and worlds create ; 
But whispers in my spirit's ear 
In tones of love or warning fear, 
A language none beside may hear. 
To Him from wanderings long and wild 

1 come, an overwearied child. 

[86] 




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